Token, Inc. Secures $18.5 Million in Series A Funding to Expand in Europe

Press Release04/24/17

24 April 2017 – Token, Inc., a turnkey open banking platform provider that enables banks to generate revenue from PSD2, today announced its Series A funding. Funding from major investors including Octopus Ventures, EQT Ventures and OP Financial Group totalled $15.7 million, which together with other investors, brings Token’s Series A total to $18.5 million.

From January 2018, the European Payment Services Directive, PSD2, will require banks to grant account access to a variety of customer-permitted third party service providers for the purpose of payment initiation and retrieving information. Token’s open banking platform helps banks quickly and cost effectively meet these compliance requirements while also creating opportunities to generate new revenues. In addition to being a turnkey PSD2 compliance solution, Token also offers programmable money capabilities, empowering banks to create revenue from a number of high-value business cases including e-commerce checkout, B2B payments, bill pay, and many more.

Founded in 2015 by serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Kirsch (FrameMaker, acquired by Adobe Systems and Infoseek, acquired by the Walt Disney Company) and former Global Chief Technology Officer of Citigroup, Yobie Benjamin, Token has since grown rapidly, opening a European office in London in July 2016. Since inception, Token has also made a series of high-profile appointments, including COO, Todd Clyde, a senior executive with four consecutive successful exits from financial services technology and enterprise software companies. The company has also announced strategic partnerships with Fidor Bank and OP Bank, both known for their innovation in financial services.

The lead investor in the Series A is one of Europe’s largest venture capital teams, UK-based Octopus Ventures, which has backed a number of successful fintech businesses. Simon Andrews of Octopus Ventures, commented: “At Octopus we focus on backing unusually talented entrepreneurs and Token, headed up by serial entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, was a perfect fit for us. Token is proving that programmable money can transform the way the world transacts. We are looking forward to supporting Steve and the team in the next phase of growth and look forward to seeing the organisation develop from here on.”

Joining the round was Stockholm-based EQT Ventures, part of alternative investments firm EQT which has an impressive track record of over 170 investments and 84 exits. Andreas Thorstensson, Technology Partner at EQT Ventures and Board Member for Token, said: “Token is offering a true game changer in the world of banking and financial services. Through a secure API, they are creating an open banking ecosystem, which creates possibilities for new revenue streams for its customers and a better user experience for consumers. This also helps the banks become compliant with the new PSD2 regulation. We couldn’t be happier supporting Steve and his fantastic team on this journey.”

Additional investors include OP Financial Group, the first financial services provider in Europe to offer online banking services, Plug And Play Ventures and Digital Currency Group.

Steve Kirsch, CEO and founder of Token, commented: “Securing the backing from such world-class investors allows us to grow and execute faster on our mission to reinvent the world’s payment systems by providing common, secure access to all banks and a modern, bank-centric payment ecosystem. Each firm shares our excitement about the future of open banking and fully appreciates the impact that programmable money will have on the future of digital transactions. ”

Meet Token at EBAday in Dublin, June 20-21 and Money2020 in Copenhagen, June 26-28. To learn more about Token, please visit www.token.io.

About Token
Token is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco with offices in London. Token’s open banking platform helps banks quickly and cost effectively meet the PSD2 compliance requirements before the deadline, and generate new revenue. Further, it raises security and reduces fraud and disintermediation. Unlike in-house developed solutions, Token supports the same API across all banks. Banks that use Token will have access to the most third-parties’ applications. This in turn means greater revenue for those banks.

Token’s team combines years of highly successful execution and innovation in the technology, banking and security sectors. Token’s CEO and Founder, Steve Kirsch, has invented several groundbreaking Internet technologies and has had multiple billion dollar exits. Token’s co-founder, Yobie Benjamin, was formerly the Global CTO at Citigroup where he was responsible for the processing of quadrillions of dollars a year in payments.

Token has been recognised in the 2016 GTS Global Innovator Competition as the ‘Most disruptive company across all categories, globally’, and is the winner of PlugAndPlay’s 2016 Fintech EXPO, which was contested by more than 1000 applicants from around the world.

About Octopus Ventures
Octopus Ventures is a London and New York based venture capital firm, focused on identifying unusually talented entrepreneurs. In recent years we have been fortunate to back the founding teams of over 60 companies, including Conversocial, graze.com, LoveFiLM, Property Partner, Secret Escapes, Sofar Sounds, Swiftkey, Swoon Editions, Uniplaces, tails.com, Zoopla Property Group and Zynstra.

We can invest from £250,000 to £25 million in a first round of funding and will look to follow in subsequent rounds. We are proud to be known as one of the most entrepreneur friendly investors in Europe and a significant part of our portfolio consists of referrals from teams we have already invested in or serial entrepreneurs who we have previously backed.

Octopus Ventures is part of the Octopus group. Octopus is a fast-growing UK fund management business with leading positions in several specialist sectors including property finance, healthcare, energy and smaller company investing. Founded in 2000, Octopus manages more than £6 billion of funds on behalf of 50,000 investors.

About EQT Ventures
EQT Ventures is a new European VC fund with commitments of just over €566 million and offices in Stockholm, Amsterdam, London and Luxembourg. Fuelled by some of Europe’s most experienced company builders, EQT Ventures help the next generation of entrepreneurs with capital and hands on support. EQT Ventures is part of EQT, a leading alternative investments firm with approximately EUR 35 billion in raised capital across 22 funds. EQT funds have portfolio companies in Europe, Asia and the US with total sales of more than EUR 19 billion and approximately 110,000 employees.

Join our monthly mailing list

Email

Token Inc. needs the above information to contact you about our products and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For information on how to unsubscribe, as well as our privacy practices, please review our Privacy Policy.

By continuing to use this site you consent to the use of cookies on your device as described in our cookie policy unless you have disabled them. You can change your cookie settings at any time but parts of our site will not function correctly without them.